M. (Mother’s Maiden Name) tries to respond to two questions: (1) What does your mother’s maiden name mean to you? (2) What do you do when dealt with an illness on its terminal phase?
For the first, the dramedy explicitly responds through a direct answer coming from the icy, meticulous, career-driven lawyer Bella, adequately portrayed by Zsa Zsa Padilla, as she sits down for coffee with her sole stuck-in-college son Joven, played by Nico Antonio, who subtly and passively harbors both love and dislike to her mother throughout the story. Though this is not as expounded nor aggressively sought for by either characters, it adds an interesting flavor to their unusual relationship. Even if this comprises the film’s title, the meat is in the exploration of life through the second question posed.
Having been enabled by their upper-middle class background, they explore the terrains of health as a science, dipping to the fringes where pseudoscience play in, along with the minimally-tested and -researched science of stem cells; where health works as a system, a world most of us are not aware of except through second-hand accounts and biased portraits from the tri-media. A meritorious achievement of the film is a balanced and directed view of the different forms of quackery and modern medicine: through the voice of a stern, objective and determined patient without losing itself in jargon and in-your-face advocacy for the former, or melodrama for the latter.
With the extent of the disease and Bella’s persistence to be treated, the film lightly immerses us to a respectful and fair exhibition of the local healthcare complex. Another storyline props up hereafter with their househelp’s daughter falling in a familiar state of advanced malady, only without resources to even get a definite diagnosis. (This part is a special treat for medical professionals, as a medical mystery is then in play for those looking for one.) If not for the engaging script, and deft cinematography, this section appears too coincidental and too trying to shout for help, but still is necessary as it introduces us to another character–the Philippine healthcare system. He is there to help you but you only seek him when you are already out of options. And for some with a possibility of cure available, money is still the final barrier, as when Bella sees a child with hydrocephalus and tries to make a change–an allegory to the hand-outs government and non-government groups give to those in need. Back to our protagonist, she seeks out the treatment he offered but only after the second opinion from a Singaporean physician fails to bring anything new to the table. They aid their extended family, by circumstance, in seeking help even when they are already right in front of him. Stemming from the urgency of the patient and their family, it goes to the typical enraged route, not only for a climax but as a logical direction and demand from the fuming lady. Her fury is an act of compassion, providing contrast on how her similar actions would reflect as plain ego-boosting in the many prior shouting matches, or mostly monologues. Even without any large palpable transformation, this subtle development doubles as a marked progression for the healthcare seeker as an active player of life, though not her own. Pitting her against the healthcare system who is as rigid and stern as hers is a delightful scene to watch.
Furthermore, what separates this work of fiction and the sensational nightly news is how they cast no villain. M. does not paint the hospitals, doctors and nurses as stereotypical self-serving servants, for they have their own jobs and families to take care of, and are already meeting with a deluge of demand. And even if they have acted soon enough, they are just mere tortoises to the hares of cancer, hypertension, diabetes, disseminated tuberculosis, congestive heart failure and more terms the average Filipino is afflicted with but know not of.
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With the number of stops throughout their search for a possibility, the engaging atmosphere and storytelling never falters thanks to the craftsmanship of the well-oiled team of director-writer Zig M. Dulay, cinematography from Albert Banzon, score by Joseph Lansang, a lead that held her ground, and medico-social realism, save for two forgiveable minor blunders*, that was unusual even amongst the heavily-funded productions, local or foreign. Somewhere down the road though, it loses some cogs in their machine with Joven reeling in the sidelines: with his search for identity continuing uncaptured, and his flirtations as an intermittent source of giggles and endorphins against the bleak backdrop of two characters’ mortality.
Given the premise, M. could have come down to a heart-warming tale of a monster gaining a heart through a battle against time but it doesn’t. Some may find it pointless in the end or see the character too rigid but sometimes, it just is so in real life. Even with the great tribulations to get an ailing patient to a hospital, when the situation is way past the point of no return, we just have to accept. That is the third dimension of healthcare the film espouses: a philosophy wherein death is not a tragedy. The tragedy is when we cannot accept the looming reality.
*For those interested, the two minor medical inaccuracies are as follows:
(1) Mistranslation of “injecting intravenously” to “ingesting intravenously”.
(2) A blood pressure reading of 80/80 when the second number, called the diastolic blood pressure, can never be noted equal or higher than the first number, the systolic blood pressure. For higher learning, you can read more on manual measurement of blood pressure using the sphygmomanometer in many respected sources around the web. The script could have been modified to “low or falling blood pressure”, or simply stating a singular reading of 80.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2lYeCpEEK0?controls=0&showinfo=0]
